Maestro
by Fading Grace
Summary: Kyouya writes a song, and Tamaki plays it. This is basically a study of their friendship.


This isn't romance. I promise. The word 'love' doesn't appear even once. It's just about them being friends, maybe. (If your mind doesn't immediately jump to say, "That means that they're in love!" like mine does.)

* * *

When all the girls were gone, when all the hosts had said their goodbyes until tomorrow, Kyouya remained. He still had to wave his magic wand and make all the numbers work.

Tamaki didn't like it when he wasn't near Kyouya, because then Kyouya would be alone and all of Tamaki's Progress would be lost. So, usually, Tamaki stayed after the club was closed to keep Kyouya company.

However, Tamaki was minus a necessary quality; patience. He couldn't sit still and let Kyouya work. So, he played the piano. After all,they were in a music room.

He had to be careful. When he played, Tamaki had a habit of _playing_ the music. His fingers dropped onto the keys and the notes became harsh and loud; they were light, and the notes were whispered. The music came alive, and Kyouya became distracted.

Tamaki thought that he became a robot, in the hour or so when he played the notes exactly as they were written. Maybe Kyouya was contagious.

Lately, though, this time had been getting longer. First, it was an hour. Now, it was stretched to nearly twice that.

Tamaki watched Kyouya during a song that he already knew by heart. Kyouya's expression never changed as his pen traced a perfect circle and colored it in and then a straight line attached to it. He began a new level with a line and a squiggly line over it. Tamaki tried to imagine what it looked like.

Was he drawing a treble clef?

Kyouya looked up. "What's wrong?"

Tamaki realized that his hands had stopped in the air. He had been in the middle of a rather climactic flourish. He didn't continue. "Are you scoring music?"

Kyouya blinked and reshuffled the papers on the folder he held in front of him. Without a word, he began to write down numbers.

Tamaki stood up. "No, I want to see! What song? What song was it? I'll play it for you!"

Kyouya said, "The song doesn't have a name, and you won't play it."

Tamaki beamed, and gushed, "So you were composing something!" He stopped to think. "I didn't know you could play."

"Why wouldn't I play?" Kyouya asked, his pen speeding down an arithmetic problem. "I simply don't enjoy it."

Tamaki pouted, sitting next to him. "But you were composing…"

Kyouya said, "Why should I not?"

Tamaki smiled the mature, purely happy smile that he only gave to Kyouya. "I bet that you're good at composing. It's all just patterns and math and chords."

Kyouya worked faster, offering no comment.

"I'm really bad. I can't keep all the things in my head, the melody and harmony and everything."

Kyouya worked faster, head bowed so low that Tamaki couldn't see his face.

"Especially orchestra work. You have to know and understand all of the different instruments. That takes prowess."

Kyouya worked faster. The ink barely had time to affix itself to paper.

Tamaki lowered his voice to a whisper. "You would be good at that, too, Kyouya."

Kyouya's pen stopped abruptly, and he pulled in a deep breath. He stared down at the numbers with wide eyes.

Tamaki looked, too. "Oh, you're done. We made quite a profit, didn't we?"

Kyouya moved to stand up, fixing his glasses with one hand. "I'm leaving."

Tamaki held onto his shoulder. "Please Kyouya, let me play the song that you wrote."

Kyouya was definitely not going to allow that.

Tamaki turned on the Anguished look, closely followed by the I-Shall-Never-Forgive-You variation.

Kyouya handed the sheet music to him. "I told you that it's not finished."

Tamaki bounced with excitement and sprinted to the piano. The music rested on its holder, and he held his hands at the ready.

He played the music, and let it come alive.

It had some peculiarities. Usually, a song had its melody on the treble clef (played with the right hand) while the notes on the bass clef kept time and harmonized (played with the left).

Kyouya's song had a second melody on the bass clef, which had a different time signature. Only a few notes were played at the same time as in the right-hand melody.

Tamaki was barely listening, concentrating instead on playing all of the notes correctly. It was a technically difficult piece, but he found it surprisingly easy to master the weird timing and continue the disjointed rhythm.

He reached the end of what was written and stopped.

He turned back to the first page and played only the right-hand melody. It was happy and confident; the notes were so high and bright that it dominated and overshadowed the other.

He reached the end of what was written. He didn't look at Kyouya, and he didn't let himself analyze the idea that was stealing into his mind.

He went back to play the other. It was lower and darker – not depressing, but calm. Though unnoticed at first, it was certainly heard in between the notes of the right-hand melody. They harmonized, the few times that their notes were played together.

He reached the end again. Kyouya was sitting silently on the couch with his carefully blank face.

Tamaki finally let himself think and knew that the two melodies very closely resembled himself and Kyouya.

He turned back to the beginning and played them together again. Now that he knew the song was about their friendship, he made the notes tell a sort of story.

Kyouya said, "You're playing it wrong. You tend to leave out a few notes in any song, and it alters the meaning."

Tamaki smiled. "How it sounds it up to the person playing."

"It's wrong. Why not just leave it as it's written?" He frowned. "You play it too quickly, and it's too upbeat."

Tamaki laughed, once. "That is how you work. You think that everything can be written, and never changed again after. But I make you live." He smiled the mature smile. "That is what _I_ am good at, Kyouya."

Kyouya closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were turned away, and he was smiling.

Tamaki reached the end, this time reluctantly. "When will you finish it?" he asked softly.

"I might not," Kyouya said. "Some things should never be finished."


End file.
